To Fight The Good Fight- The Battle Over Control O Essay, Research Paper
To Fight the Good Fight:” The Battle Over Control of the Pasadena City Schools, 1969-1979In January of 1970, Pasadena, California held the dubious distinction of being the first non-Southern city ordered by the federal courts to desegregate its public school system. This court-order sparked a decade long battle within the school district. Pasadenans became entrenched in two camps: progressives who wanted to integrate the schools and fundamentalists who vowed to stop court-ordered busing. Despite Pasadena’s precedent setting role, historians have neglected it. The battle in Pasadena is significant, however, because it suggests an anti-busing motive that historians have overlooked. The evidence shows that opponents of integration in Pasadena used the tension over busing mainly as an election tool. Their agenda was twofold. First, they wanted to purify ideologically the public school system. Secondly, in order to achieve their first goal they needed to maintain local control, so they fought increasing federal intervention at every turn.The evidence shows that the federal court-order to desegregate the public school system caused a large number of moderate conservatives to shift to a more extreme position. This movement allowed fundamentalists to gain enough support using a “Stop Forced Busing” slogan to be elected to office and form a majority on the school board. It was clear to many in the community that fundamentalists had capitalized upon the fears of Pasadenans in order to gain control of the board so that they could execute policies designed to return the public schools to their pre-1920s state of “fundamental education.” This paper is an attempt to examine the turbulent decade of the 1970s in Pasadena in order to understand the ideology of the fundamentalists who dominated the school board. From 1973 on, the battle over control of the school district had four main focal points: book banning, the creation of fundamental schools, purging the district of educators with unacceptable political philosophies, and, ending federal control of the school district. While these objectives were all tinged with racism, they were in reality much broader and more complex. The events surrounding the desegregation of the Pasadena school system presents a challenge to the current race-centered analysis of anti-busing sentiment.Literature on anti-busing sentiment in the North and West tends to support a focus on race as the central issue involved. In Boston for example, both Ronald P. Formisano and J. Anthony Lukas1 found that the most violent reaction against busing and school desegregation came from the white working-class that felt betrayed by desegregation policies which targeted their communities while leaving the wealthier white suburbs effectively segregated. Both historians stress the key role played by racism in efforts to maintain segregated schooling in Boston. In fact, the historical scholarship that discusses northern busing issues seems to focus on the role of racism and place it at the center of the busing opposition’s motives. The evidence from Pasadena, however, radically alters that perception. The actions of fundamentalists suggest that the role of anti-busing sentiments and the events in Pasadena were imbedded in a larger conservative agenda which was motivated in part by religious fundamentalism and an opposition to big government.This would suggest that anti-busing needs a broader analysis and that it would benefit from the historiography dealing with the rise of the political right in the post-World War II era. Historians need to look to sociology and the work of scholars such as Jerome Himmelstein. The concerns of fundamentalists in Pasadena fit neatly into studies of the rise of the political right in the 1970s and 1980s. Fundamentalists were deeply troubled by what they took to be the moral decay of American society. They were frightened by the “growing domestic conflict over family, gender roles, and basic values.”2 These members of the political right in Pasadena also expressed concern over “collectivism, the tendency of the state to organize and control all social life.”3 This issue of creeping federal control panicked Pasadena’s fundamentalists and in 1970 they were sent into a tailspin when the federal government stepped in and took over the school district. This sense of panic and doom led them to adopt a “siege mentality” which increased throughout the 1970s. The evidence presented in this paper strongly suggests that Pasadena’s anti- busing fight belongs in the historiography of the rise of the political right rather than in the traditional anti-busing historiography which focuses almost exclusively upon race relations.4The Pasadena School District, like many districts throughout the country, was divided into racially and politically distinct neighborhoods. So, in order to understand the dynamics of Pasadena school politics in the 1970s it is necessary to get a sense of the geography and of the history of the school district. The district is made up of several distinct neighborhoods that predictably voted liberal or conservative. The first, and most important, neighborhood is the northwest section of Pasadena. This portion of the city was a densely populated section where African Americans and Hispanics were forced to live, primarily because of a long history of housing discrimination. This area was bordered on the west by the Arroyo,5 on the north by the foothills, on the east by Foothill Boulevard and on the south by Washington Boulevard. According to the findings of Robin Kelley, as late as 1973 ninety-five percent of the African American population in Pasadena still lived in the northwest area.6 This group of people had to shoulder the brunt of the school board’s extremist actions in the 1970s. Consistently throughout the decade residents of the Northwest section fought against fundamentalists. Leaders backed by the NAACP and local black churches regularly protested school board policies in the newspapers and at school board meetings.7At the opposite end of the spectrum and on the opposite side of the district rested solidly conservative to extremely conservative communities: East Altadena, Sierra Madre and Hastings Ranch. All three of these neighborhoods were entirely made up of white middle-class residents. Since Pasadena had no significant white working-class population, the residents of these areas represented those who had most recently climbed out of the lower middle-class and the working-class. Compared to the older sections of Pasadena, where upper- and upper- middle class families had resided since the early twentieth century, these sections were made up of relative newcomers to the area. Because many of these residents had the most to lose they vehemently opposed busing and school desegregation. The fears of these Pasadenans probably stemmed from the fact that they did not have the option of sending their children to private schools or becoming part of the “white flight” 8 that surrounded them. Many of the white people in these neighborhoods had struggled hard to purchase their homes and they worried that their property values would drop if Pasadena became integrated, and so they felt trapped. As the newly arrived middle-class perhaps they also supported racially discriminatory policies simply because part of their sense of status rested upon a feeling of racial superiority. 9 The racism running throughout these neighborhoods allowed them to be manipulated by school board candidates using “anti-busing” and other racially charged campaign slogans.Because these racially segregated communities were the most predictable in their voting patterns, it was the other areas of Pasadena that school board elections and news analysts tended to target: Linda Vista, San Rafael, and southern portions of the city. These neighborhoods provided the swing votes in local elections. During the 1970s these neighborhoods in Pasadena became susceptible to the racist propaganda of the fundamentalists. In the 1971, 1973 and 1975 elections, the majority of white precincts supported fundamentalist candidates. 10 And it is these voters who moved the ideological make-up of the board solidly to the right.Moderates fell prey to the rallying cry of “stop forced busing” trumpeted in Pasadena in the 1960s and 1970s. Busing, they believed, would remove their children from the neighborhoods and put them at risk by sending them into dangerous neighborhoods in the predominantly African American sections of the city. Desegregating the schools would destroy the quality of their children’s education. So, maintaining the quality of Pasadena’s public education for their children was one of their primary concerns. However, they also demanded that rising taxes be stopped. This group consistently voted against local bond measures for the schools out of a fear that it would cause a tax increase. Often times these two goals conflicted. By stopping forced busing they claimed that the district would save millions of dollars a year, thus fulfilling both of their concerns by insuring the quality of the schools and avoiding a tax hike.A diverse group of Pasadenans made up this moderate camp. Many of them were parents of school age children, lots of whom would be part of the white flight when integration became the goal of the school board. These families, if they could afford to, left Pasadena for the surrounding communities of La Canada and San Marino or they sent their children to one of the areas many private institutions. A large number of Pasadenans fell into this group and therefore they were the people who both progressives and fundamentalists tried to bring into their camps throughout the post-Brown v. Board of Education era.Fundamentalists and progressives were not new to the Pasadena school district. For decades public school politics in Pasadena had been suffering from a “yo-yo” effect. Each time progressives gained control they would throw out fundamentalist programs and policies. And each time fundamentalists gained control they would do the same to progressive policies.11 However, as the threat of forced integration grew over the decade preceding the 1970s so did the power of fundamentalists.The Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 had very little direct impact upon Pasadena because the African American population was relatively small. However, the population began to increase steadily in the 1960s and 1970s and the implications of Brown took on new proportions for Pasadenans. By the early 1960s, major desegregation decisions began placing the burden of integration upon local school boards. Nonetheless, the board in Pasadena continued to ignore the issue of desegregation.12In lieu of making substantial progress towards desegregation, the school district poured millions of dollars in aid into compensatory education programs in predominantly black schools. Through these programs they hoped to appease state and federal agencies. Continually throughout the 1960s educationally conservative board members attempted to skirt visible integration within the schools. Aside from compensatory educational programs, in 1964 the school board announced “Plan IV” which allowed a small number of children from the seven “most segregated” schools to transfer to certain “receiving schools,” provided that they could find their own transportation. Rather than desegregating the schools, “Plan IV” increased segregation in the district. Only 13.1% of students from the “most segregated” schools were white, but 31.1% of the students transferred to the “receiving schools” were white. Also, studies found that those with higher income levels were the ones who left the predominantly black schools.13 We seem to have a typical story of racist ideals controlling school board policies but through the actions of the fundamentalist board in the 1970s it becomes clear that their agenda was much more complicated than simply maintaining segregation and white dominance.The easy victory of the fundamentalists slate of LuVerne LaMotte, Steve Salisian, and Joseph Engholm in March of 1965 using slogans such as, “Neighborhood Schools are in Danger!” demonstrates the growing fear on the part of many white Pasadenans that forced busing, an end to neighborhood schools and increased federal control was looming on their horizon. They were right. Over the next five years state and federal courts demanded that school districts take steps to desegregate. During that time as well a fundamental shift had taken place on the school board. LaMotte and Engholm had, during their tenure, moved from the fundamentalist camp to the progressive. Consistently during their first years in office they voted against any motions that would desegregate the schools.14 However, as they became more familiar with the school system and more concerned with the quality of education they shifted to an integrationist stance. After visiting the schools, both Engholm and LaMotte noted the marked difference in the predominantly African American schools and the principally white schools. Schools with a majority of African Americans were overcrowded and understaffed. The facilities were also older and more run down than the facilities for white children.15 By the time the two board members ran for re-election in 1969 their candidacy was endorsed by progressives and they were being denounced by the fundamentalists who had initially put them in office. 16Nonetheless, Pasadena had not moved in the direction of integration and by the end of 1969 the federal court took the control out of their hands. Thus, because of conservative inaction one of their greatest fears was realized: The federal government stepped in to monitor the integration process. The federal government’s presence in Pasadena was immediately evident and the fundamentalists felt that they were under attack which caused them to quickly adopt a “siege mentality.” On January 20 1970, Federal District Court Judge Manuel Real gave the Pasadena City School District twenty-seven days to come up with a plan to desegregate the public school system. Not only did the District need to reduce the racial segregation of its students, but of its staff as well.Elementary schools in Pasadena traditionally followed the most inflexible standards of segregation. During the 1969-1970 school year eighty-five percent of the school district’s African-American elementary school children attended eight majority African-American elementary schools. At the same time, ninety-three percent of its white elementary age children attended the other twenty-one elementary schools in the district. Washington Elementary school, located east of the Arroyo in the Northwest section of Pasadena, for example, maintained an enrollment that was over ninety percent African-American. During the 1969-1970 school year twenty-eight white students and 1060 African-American students attended this school. The Linda Vista Elementary school, located approximately one mile away on the opposite side of the Arroyo, in an upper-middle class, all white section of Pasadena known as Linda Vista, had 163 white children and one African-American child enrolled during the same period. This was not a new phenomenon in Pasadena. Washington Elementary School had historically been a majority African-American school and Linda Vista had been a majority white school.Cleveland Elementary School, also only a mile away from Linda Vista in the Northwest section of Pasadena, maintained an enrollment that was ninety-seven percent African-American. When Linda Vista Elementary School opened with space for 255 students, not enough children lived in the area to fill its limited capacity . Up until 1964 the school district assigned the white students from Cleveland and another majority African- American elementary school, Lincoln, to Linda Vista in order to fill this gap.Another glaring example of the purposeful segregation involving these elementary schools can be seen between 1967 and 1969. The district closed Linda Vista school for two years in order to repair structural problems. Instead of reassigning these children to the three elementary schools in the Northwest area which were approximately one mile away and less crowded, at this time, the district reassigned the children to a predominantly white school, San Rafael Elementary School over three miles away which had less room to accommodate these students than the closer, predominantly African-American elementary schools.In his decision Real addressed those gross inequalities. He wrote:The plan shall provide for student assignments in such a manner that, by or before the beginning of the school year that commences in September of 1970 there shall be no school in the District, elementary or junior high or senior high school, with a majority of any minority students.17These words served to polarize the community. Fundamentalists felt that the federal court had just destroyed any hope that they had of preserving the award winning quality of Pasadena’s public school system. Judge Real had taken the district out of the hands of local officials and had given control to a federal government which had no idea how to handle Pasadena’s problems because they knew nothing of the dynamics of the population. Fundamentalists had no doubt that the federal government would destroy the school district and public education in Pasadena.At the Tuesday afternoon Pasadena school board meeting six days after Judge Real’s decision, the school board voted to comply with the court-order. Board Member John Welsh, visibly shaken by the decision, stood and pulled a folded piece of paper out his pocket and read the following statement:In my opinion we are today witness to the beginning of the end of local control, and under these conditions of Federal mandate where local officials, duly elected and responsible, are not allowed to function, conditions where those closest to the scene are not allowed to prevail and solve their own problems, I find it difficult to serve. . . There are challenging times ahead and I wish you Godspeed in working toward solving Pasadena’s educational problems. With that, he slowly pushed back his chair, rose, and left the board room.18 John Welsh resigned in response to the school board’s decision not to fight the federal court-order. Not long after Welsh’s resignation, a group of fundamentalists launched the first recall effort in Pasadena’s 100 year history in order to remove the three board members (Lowe, LaMotte, and Engholm) who refused to appeal the court decision. Ultimately the recall failed at the polls, but only by a narrow margin because of the steady shift of moderates into the fundamentalist camp. LaMotte, Lowe and Engholm were able to hang on to their school board seats, at least until they were up for re-election in 1973. While the elected school board officials throughout the 1960s were attempting to side-step desegregation, fundamentalists were playing on the fears of “forced busing” and communist infiltration in order to make inroads onto the school board.Throughout the first part of the 1970-71 school year racial unrest at the schools dominated the news, causing endless complaints from parents, growing alarm over the safety of the children, and elected officials’ increased fear of “white flight.” The turbulence quickly diminished but many in the community moved towards conservative positions on the issue of education. This allowed Henry Marcheschi to win a seat on the school board using an “anti-busing” platform. 19 The 1971 election indicated a dramatic shift in the voters and progressives knew that they would face a tough fight during the 1973 school board elections. The fundamentalists also realized that this would be a pivotal election. This election, more than any other, changed the course of the Pasadena Unified School District and caused the battle over the schools to reach a fevered pitch, because it was in this election that moderates and conservatives overwhelmingly supported a slate of fundamentalists.One evening in 1972 a group of close to a dozen fundamentalists met to discuss their concerns over the 1973 election. In their view the last three years of forced busing had virtually destroyed the school district. According to their statistics 7,000 children had fled the public school system equaling close to forty percent of the white student population. While property values in neighboring communities were steadily increasing, the value of Pasadena’s houses were at an all time low. It appeared as if their worst fears had come to fruition. This small band felt that their “backs were against the wall” and that “time was running out.”20 Fortunately for this gathering the voters were ready to accept just about any candidate they put forward.Fundamentalists, Henry S. Myers, Jr., Lyman W. Newton, and Richard Vetterli, easily won the election and moved the school board firmly to the fundamentalist camp and the extreme right, educationally, politically, and religiously. Marcheschi, Vetterli, and Newton were all active members of the Mormon Church. Richard Vetterli, in fact, taught for several years at Brigham Young, the university established by the Mormon church, and he authored a history text entitled, Mormonism, Americanism, and Politics.21 When reading this text it becomes clear that the religious affiliation of these new board members lends insight into their ideology. According to the introduction of Vetterli’s book, for Mormons economics and politics were closely tied to their religious beliefs. In the introduction, Ivan Hinderaker, chair of the Political Science Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote:Latter-day Saints, in politics and economics, tend to stand for aggressive individual and local responsibility. . . . [They] tend to believe in an economic and political system in which individual free agency and initiative are very important elements. . . . [They] tend to be deeply patriotic Americans. They believe that their destiny and future is inseparably bound up with the destiny and future of the American Nation, that hand in hand Mormonism and Americanism are the answer to a sick world in troubled times, that in these two forces lie the temporal and spiritual salvation of the world. 22Mormonism thus provided the root of Marcheschi, Vetterli, and Newton’s extreme conservatism and fundamentalism.The cornerstone of their political and educational philosophies lay in the fundamental school structure. In the eyes of these men, the only way to save the children of Pasadena, and the entire country, was to wipe out progressive educational philosophies which had been introduced in the 1920s by John Dewey and to remove the “militant subversives” who were controlling the classrooms. Their tenure on the school board was chiefly dedicated to doing just that. Progressive educational philosophies, including “new math” and “new English,” had destroyed the minds of children. They saw a militant political agenda buried within this philosophy of progressive education, an agenda that would lead to increasingly centralized government control. “Essentially, progressive educators claim that in the modern multi-cultural society. . . the emphasis on separation of powers, states rights, and private property accumulation are hopelessly out of date,” wrote Richard Vetterli in1976. He continued, “What they say is needed is a more centrally organized political organ with the power to benevolently administer to the people under an enlightened mass democracy.”23 In his view teachers were to be the “catalyst” in this revolution. In the minds of these fundamentalists they were fighting a war for the mind and the soul of the entire country. Progressive educational philosophies were radically at odds with their political and educational theories.According to both Vetterli and Myers, progressive educators had abandoned a demanding curriculum and developed an obsessive concern with “the whole living experience of the child.” Progressive educators refused, for example, to hold students back in grade levels because they were concerned with the psychological damage that might do to the students. They also moved away from competition and encouraged cooperation among the students, the net result being the destruction of individuality. As Richard Vetterli saw it, this was a communist conspiracy designed to undermine the structure of society and the government of the United States and this view led them to label all progressives “militants”. Finally, Myers and Vetterli were also shocked by what they saw as the lack of rigorous discipline within the schools. 24By proposing the fundamental school philosophy the board majority attempted to undermine the negative forces that they saw in the public school system. Instead of “new math” and “new English” the schools would return the “three R’s.” Fundamental education also attacked what Myers referred to as “slobism.” They targeted disrespectful students, littering, graffiti, and vandalism, as well as lax dress codes that permitted jeans and sweatshirts–even for teachers. “A great costume, mind you, for digging in the garden on a Saturday afternoon. But hardly the garb for a professional teacher on the job,” commented Myers. 25 To counteract that, administrators at public fundamental schools implemented a strict dress code and severe punishment for those who did not treat their surroundings with respect.Fundamentalists also advocated corporal punishment. They taught children how to behave, follow rules, and to discipline their minds, which included: setting priorities, being responsible, being neat and orderly, and being punctual. Fundamental education proponents coupled this focus on discipline with an emphasis on competition. Many of the problems faced by public schools would simply fade away if a sense of competition was put back into the schools. According to Myers, “Nearly every major accomplishment in the history of the world has been brought about by honest, free enterprise competition. Conversely, as soon as competition is eliminated, deterioration and inefficiency are inevitable.” 26 As part of this need for competition, Myers recommended that parents choose their children’s schools. This would foster a spirit of competition among the schools in the district, thus allowing those who did a better job a chance to prosper, while those that did not would simply “go out of business.” Competition was also crucial within the classroom. Students were encouraged to work individually instead of cooperatively because this would “help the children set their aims high, yet learn to deal maturely with setbacks. . . .”27Richard Vetterli and Henry Myers made it clear in both of their books that they saw themselves as fighting some sort of international conspiracy–in all likelihood a communist one. They fought cooperation among students at every turn. At one point Myers wrote:A. . . group of individuals is working desperately to see us fail. Some of our readers will doubt that they even exist. . . This is a group of power-hungry individuals who simply do not want the masses to become educated, especially the minorities. An educated electorate votes intelligently. It cannot be led around. Whether this conspiracy is international or strictly local in its makeup is open to conjecture [emphasis added].28